It's not true at all. In software, the factory line is nothing but cp or httpd and neither costs nor produces any value. In cars, the factory line both costs and produces all the value.

> the factory line both costs and produces all the value.

I think the point OP is trying to make is that manufacturing and design are seperate steps with different workflows and expectations. And that the design step does have value, as without it your factory line has nothing particular to make or sell.

Nobody is sitting around Ford trying to make the clay modeling step faster or more error free, it's a design function. But there are hundreds of software execs out there trying to do exactly that. In part because cp and git and make and your other build tools that make up the factory line function are pretty much rock solid and cost optimized to nearly free.

Wait, I thought it was the auto company financial services division that produces all the value.

The design, factory, supply chain, etc. is just the marketing arm for the loans...

Really? So all the designers and engineers at Ford who don't have an iota of a car built by the time they're done with their work aren't producing any value?

> In software, the factory line is nothing but cp or httpd

Little-known fact, cp is actually an AI. I trained my cp AI on a copy of the gcc source code and asked it to write me a C compiler and it did! It was so accurate it even managed to reproduce gcc's bugs and quirks.

> In cars, the factory line both costs and produces all the value.

Does that apply to phones?